As I sit and work at the computer, I can look out on the riverbank of the North Saskatchewan River. Right in front of our magnificant climbing tree is a gopher hole. The little creature has caused significant damage to the grass around his hole and since it has been so dry, where there was green grass, there is now a small mound of dirt.
Gophers are a bit of a plague in this part of the world. I remember one time as we were travelling, we stopped at Horseshoe Canyon just outside of Drumheller – in our badlands. A couple were there from Europe – feeding a gopher! You wouldn’t find any respectable farmer doing that!
But I am admiring the adaptability of these rodents. Here it is setting up house, so to speak, in a city, not out there on the open prarie where it belongs. It seems to be getting along quite well although I wonder if some of the neighbors wouldn’t like to poison it. I imagine another one would just move on in to the abandoned hole if that happened.
I guess their being so adaptable helps make them the plague that they are.
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You just can’t trust those Europeans!-)
Yeah, and come to think of it they were anglophone – so you know where they probably were from!
After growing up on the prairies I found it quite funny to find a gopher in a prominent place in a Zoo in Duluth. Most farm boys that I know have a few good stories about trying to remove the “plague.”